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Topic: The Legend of Dragoon Script Overhaul (Read 2797 times)

I've been working on this for a while now, but I feel like I'm finally far enough in this project to post a topic for it here.

This project is intended as a fix for the (often amusingly) poor official localization of The Legend of Dragoon. To be clear, I'm calling this is a "script overhaul," not a retranslation, as it is based off of the English version of the game. The aim isn't to create a more technically accurate translation of the game, but to edit and improve the script that English-speaking players already know and love, in spite of its foibles.

This is also more than a simple grammar fix. Some of the changes I make to individual lines are quite substantial, but I always strive to make sure that the original intents of the lines and personalities of the characters are retained.

Expand some NPC dialogue, so that they have more to say (that is, the dialogue seen when returning to locations later in the game)

I am doing this for all the text in the game (eventually). That includes the main story, NPCs, environmental objects, combat, and in-engine cutscenes. For now, the project is just me, with some editing help on my altered script by a friend of mine. The script on the first disc alone is well over 40,000 words, so it won't be finished for quite some time. Progress is steady, though, if not very fast.

Oh wow, this project sounds so cool! I've been waiting for someone to do something like this for LoD for a long time. I'm a big stickler for natural scripts in games, so I'll be patiently awaiting this.

Someone should do a full game undub and subtitle the FMVs, too. Just 'cause the voice acting can be, uh... rather unintentionally hilarious.

"Ohhhh, ZIEG! It cannot BEEEEE!!!"

But that's likely beyond the scope of this project. I think I speak for many when I say that I'm glad to see this.

Also, the texture for the "Don't Select" i feel could be changed to "Cannot Select" or "Can't Select"

As for over world things, All i can think of changing is changing "No Entry" to "Leave" cause the way its worded it looks like it would be shwoing that you cant enter lmao

It's not high priority for me, but I'll do it if I can. The issue is that I'm not sure where to find or how to change all that stuff. Everything that isn't dialogue is compressed, so far as I can tell, and I don't know anything about recognizing and dealing with compression algorithms.

P.S. I speak English, and in English we call 'em Additions, not Additionals. Don't know where you got that idea. (Kidding, kidding. But I do think Addition sounds better and is ingrained in the English LOD lexicon. Agree on the rest, though.)

Good news! It took a whole lot of time staring at the disassembler in debugging mode, but I was able to identify and reverse engineer the decompression algorithm the game uses for its .OV_ files, where all the items, monster names, menu text, etc. is stored. I'm a little surprised I managed that, to be honest.

Anyway, I was able to reconstruct (correctly, so far as my tests have shown) the decompression algorithm in Python, and have been able to decompress all the .OV_ files. Next, I need to figure out how to reverse the process and re-compress the files so they match the originals. EDIT: I think I have compression working (potentially barring at least one fringe case). I've tried decompressing and re-compressing one of the .OV_ files and replacing it in the ISO, and the game worked. The re-compressed file isn't identical to the original, because it's apparently impossible to exactly replicate how it orders byte pairs with equal frequencies in its dictionaries, but that shouldn't and doesn't seem to matter to the game.

If I can manage that, I'll start seeing about extending my script editing tools to handle the new pointer type, and then see whether I can change the length of the text without breaking everything. EDIT: Already ran into some troubles with expanding the text that defines Addition text effects in the bottom right of the screen during battle. Have some ideas on how to expand the font table, at least.

Do you plan to employ any of the hacks on RH into the translation, or have the trannslation script be compatible?

I don't intend to include them in my patch, but I think they'll be compatible. I'm reasonably certain that none of the files NoOneee's patches target contain game text, and I know for certain now that SMAP.OV_, the file modified for the encounter rate fix, does not.

The translation patch would have to be applied first. I'm just making a PPF patch, so it has to be applied to a clean copy of the US ISO. But NoOneee either applies a patch to an individual game file, or inserts MRG files extracted from a Japanese ISO into certain game files. If their MRG file replacer works properly, it shouldn't matter what's in the rest of the file, or even if the file has changed size.

If that doesn't work, I may reconsider including them in my own patch. I'd rather not either force people to use mods they may not want or release a bunch of different (and large) patch versions to offer different combinations of mods, though.

Still some hinks to work out of compression for some particular unusual circumstances in a couple of the .OV_ files, but it basically works, and text can be altered and repointed, and the compressed and uncompressed file sizes expanded.